20 Years Ago This Former Gymnast Was Made To Believe Her Sexual Assault Was All In Her Head

Now she is finally being believed.
- bymarie claire

Mar
2017

20 years ago, a then-16-year-old Larissa Boyce told her gymnastics coach that the team’s physician had sexually abused her.

Boyce said Nassar was treating her for backpain but on a number of occasions he physically assaulted her.

“It felt like it was sexual, but I remember justifying it in my mind ― he’s an Olympic doctor, he must know what he was doing,” Boyce said.

Knowing in her gut something wasn’t quite right, Boyce, speaking to The Huffington Post, says she told her coach, Kathie Klages, who downplayed it and assured her she must have misunderstood. This in turn made Boyce feel ashamed and assume it was all in her head.